Lincoln Cathedral, Spilsby & St. Martin's, Stamford in Lincolnshire;

Lincoln Cathedral (in full The Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lincoln, or sometimes St. Mary's Cathedral) is an historic cathedral in Lincoln in England, and seate of the Diocese of Lincoln in the Church of England. William the Conqueror ordered the first cathedral to be built in Lincoln, in 1072. Before that, St. Mary's Church in Lincoln was a mother church but not a cathedral and the seate of the diocese was at Dorchester Abbey in Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. It is at the confluence of the River Thames with its tributary the River Thame.

In the 634 Pope Honorius I sent a bishop called Birinus to convert the Saxons of the Thames Valley to Christianity. Saint Birinus, the first bishop, was sent to that district by Pope Honorius I, until 1085, when the See of Mercia was transferred to Lincoln. King Cynegils of Wessex gave Dorchester to Birinus to make it the seate of a new Diocese of Dorchester under a Bishop of Dorchester, which was extremely large, and covered most of Wessex and Mercia.

The cathedral at Dorchester was founded in 634 by the Roman missionary, Saint Birinus. It was the bishop's seate for the Diocese of Wessex, which was moved to Winchester in 660. It again became the seate for a diocese, in around 675, when the Mercian Diocese of Leicester was transferred there and renamed. The diocese of Dorchester merged with that of Lindsey in 971 and it became the Diocese of Lincoln in 1072 when the bishop's seate moved to Lincoln. Lincoln was more central to a diocese that stretched from the Thames to the Humber.

 

Dorchester Abbey was founded in 1140 by Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, for Augustinian, or Black Canons (strictly speaking, for that particular group of Augustinian canons known as the Arrouaisian Order). No register or cartulary of Dorchester Abbey is now known to exist, and only a single charter, confirming the donation of a church by King John, is given by Dugdale. The Bishop of Lincoln was one of the signatories to the Magna Carta and for hundreds of years the Cathedral has held one of the four remaining copies of the original. It now resides in the nearby Lincoln Castle, where it is on permanent display. The other surviving copies are in Salisbury Cathedral and two are in the British Library.

Spilsby is a market town in Lincolnshire, England, with a population of about 2,500. It lies between the Wolds and the Fens. Spilsby Market was granted its charter in 1302. Bolingbroke Castle is in the village of Old Bolingbroke. It was built in about 1220 by Randulph de Blundevill, Earl of Lincoln. In 1367, Henry, son of John of Gaunt (Duke of Lancaster) was born and became heir to the castle. Later he became King Henry IV of England. From Tudor times on, the castle became dilapidated so by 1600 only the gatehouse and a tower were in habitable use. Once Henry became King in 1399 he never visited the castle again. However, by 1815, the last remaining part - the gatehouse - had collapsed.

 

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